Per today’s Burlington Free Press:
A new federal report on hunger issued Nov. 15 found that Vermont and Alabama have had the highest increase in “food insecurity” during the past 10 years.
The term “food insecurity” is a useful and specific term from a policy perspective– it’s more accurate than “starvation,” though it does lack the emotional punch.
So let me give a little perspective.
My direct experience with this is short lived– I had a short-term experience in the early 1990’s where money was bad enough that I had to scramble for meals. This lasted about three weeks. It’s the only time in my life I looked for support from a food pantry. I also volunteered for Clinton’s campaign on evening shifts, primarily because the volunteers got free pizza. Before that, on several occasions I had popcorn for dinner because it was cheap and available. Once I was willing to accept food from a pantry, I started eating real meals again, but it was incredibly difficult for me to accept that this was necessary.
People go through bad experiences in life, for a variety of reasons. I’m not writing this to reveal personal information and not interested in discussing the specifics of how this came about. That’s not the point.
The point is this: food is one of those things that we often take for granted. When the expectation of consistent meals is lost, it changes your mindset. You start thinking of food as something to hoard, to grab, to hold. It puts you outside of “normal” society and, to an extent, at least in my experience, has a kind of decivilizing effect.
In my case, it made me feel isolated– I felt separated from the people around me like there was something I needed to be ashamed of. Getting donations from other people, despite their best intentions, made me feel kind of… violated, I guess, is the word for it. This isn’t a criticism of anything or anyone. It’s just the way it worked in my head. I needed the food, and knew I needed it, and yet it was humiliating and left me shaken. The experience left a kind of fracture on my sense of the world around me and my place in it.
I say all this because I want to be clear: this is what happens when it’s short-lived and you know it’s going to improve in the near future.
What happens when it’s long term and you don’t know the way out?
The thought of that simply horrifies me. It should horrify you, too.
It’s been a very long time since I thought in depth about that experience. Wow.
A couple of things jumped out at me reading that BFP story: how can these people not be eligible for food stamps? It’s specifically mentioned that a couple of them aren’t — which makes me wonder, WTF? And the Democrats have even suggested cutting food stamps as some sort of symbolic gesture to the Republicans. Nice.
Secondly, it’s striking to read that these are people who have actual jobs — they’re not homeless/destitute/societal rejects. These are people who are doing what they can to pay their way, yet failing. Alas, in a society where $8,06 has been determined by those who have plenty as “adequate” as an hourly wage, you’re just so out of luck if that’s all you have.
But I can’t help but marvel at what this says about a society that felt compelled to bail out Mr. Blankfein and his fine-feathered friends at Goldman Sachs. I know, I know, it’s a cliche comparison, but an appropriate one all the same: we as a nation can’t be bothered to properly address the fact that an alarming number of families are going hungry, yet we (or, rather, our ruling elite) was hell-bent on spending whatever it took (i.e. tax-payer money and the debt of generations to come) to rescue the gamblers on Wall Street from the consequences of their folly.
Increasingly, we’re seeing & feeling locally the effects of profoundly bad & corrupt decision making on a federal level, and I wonder when we reach the tipping point where communities — both local-local and state — decide to face the issue that we’re being bled dry to fund endless spending that really doesn’t benefit us in any way at all. Indirectly, of course, that dynamic is the genesis of retarded knee-jerk reactions like the tea-baggers with their clueless attack on anything and everything, but it would be nice to see a more thoughtful response to the fact that while we’re paying for Tim Geithner’s friends to gold plate the jacuzzi in their vacation home, our neighbors are growing ever more desperate.
Food banks are wonderful things, and need all the support they can get. But fundamentally, they’re a bandaid on a gushing wound, and if we don’t properly address the underlying dynamic, we’re never going to meet the need no matter how many cans we donate.
If you haven’t lived on–or beyond–the edge, it’s something that a lot of folks just can’t comprehend or internalize. Even the most empathic, compassionate person won’t fully understand, but at least they still recognize a need to address these issues aggressively and humanely. Forget about the “I’ve got mine, fuck you” crowd.
Anyway, point is that there are myriad reasons why some people end up needing help. Those born on Third Base don’t see how it’s not a moral failing, and actually it’s in their best interest to help the rest of us trying to beat out the throw to First.
This is the truth that needs to be told over-and over-again in order to offset the popular misconception that public assistance recipients are a bunch of free-loaders. Most people can cite a welfare recipient who is a willful slacker, and this is readily seized upon by the right to obscure the genuine need of the vast majority of people who are forced to turn to social services for assistance. Consideration is rarely given to the pain and humiliation many experience when they find themselves in this situation, nor the genuine reluctance of most beneficiaries to go to this last resort.
Everyone can cite a tax cheat just as easily as they can an assistance fraud; and a tax cheat costs the rest of us far more than any true slacker can consume in food assistance; but somehow it is simply assumed by the right that it is fair to avoid taxes whenever possible. Unless one gets caught, no pain or humiliation accompanies tax-cheating.
No one should comment about “food shelves” unless he/she has been very, very hungry, unable to buy milk and bread for a small child or volunteered at a food shelf. As a recent volunteer, I can attest to the fact that the personal stories are heartbreaking.
It’s not fun. It’s particularly awful when you have kids.
It’s also hard to ask for or accept help when you know that, no matter how bad things are for you right in the moment, there are people who are even worse off than you are, and you feel you’re taking away from them.
In addition, asking for help feels like an imposition on those who might help you, and you feel bad that you’re imposing while fully aware that you’re going to be back in the same position in the not-too-distant future because, for example, you know there’s no job on the horizon.
People who have never been there cannot possibly conceive of how hard it is. It’s hard to imagine how much more expensive it is to be poor. When you’re poor, you can’t take advantage of those special deals that make things less expensive. You can’t order online, because you have no credit card and can’t afford internet service anyway. You can’t buy bulk quantities of things to freeze, because you don’t know if you’re going to be able to afford the electricity to run the fridge. You can’t buy cloth diapers, because buying just a few would mean skipping groceries for the entire month, whereas buying ludicrously expensive disposables once a week means you only need to scrounge diapers for the last week of the month, and you get to feed your family for 3 weeks.
It’s funny you mentioned popcorn. It’s been a favorite meal around here – it makes you feel full and has some protein. If you buy from the bulk aisle and pop it yourself (assuming you have oil or butter and money for gas/electricity for the stove), it can be really cheap and nominally nutritious. Ditto for buckwheat pancakes made from scratch, though they’re a awfully dry when you can’t afford syrup, butter, or jam.
The time spent figuring out how to survive is tremendous, and leaves little room for creativity, being attentive to your family’s emotional well-being, or being connected to your community. After a while, you begin to feel hopeless, and lose your drive to do anything at all. It’s a bad, bad place to be. And far too many of us are there, or are about to be there.